ATS: Possible first published use of Carnivore!

A 25-year-old man, Thomas Ray, was released on 10,000 bail after pleading not guilty to
attempting to extort Best Buy. Thomas had sent Best Buy threatening e-mails that he would expose "critical weaknesses" of their security systems
unless they paid him $2.5 million. With the aid of a Federal search warrant, and Best Buy's cooperation, the FBI was able to use a device they
called, and "Internet Protocol Address Verifier" that quickly identified Ray as the sender of the threatening e-mails under the pseudonym of "Jamie
Weathersby, IPC Corp."

www.startribune.com...
Paul Luehr, Assistant U.S. Attorney, said the "address verifier" was on of several investigative tools that were used to track Ray down.

Try hardware packing some intense software. I know I have read about it here on ATS somewhere...must do a search.

Found;

Originally posted by ADVISOR
Carnivore System, is the FBIs internet wiretap system.
Carnivore is attached either when law enforcement has court order under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) permitting it to intercept in
real time the contents of the electronic communications of a specific individual, or allowing it to obtain the "numbers" related to communications
from or to a specified target.
Unlike a tradional wiretap of a conventional phone line, Carnivore gives the FBI access to all traffic over the ISPs network, not just the
Communication to or from a particular target. Carnivore, which is capable of analyzing millions of messages per second, purportedly retains only the
messages of the specified target. Further information about Carnivore can be found at the FBIs Web site at
www.fbi.gov/hq/lab/carnivore/carnivore.htm

Originally posted by John Nada
Carnivore is a sealed box that is installed at the network operations center of an Internet Service Provider. It filters packets, finds e-mail going
to and from identified criminals, and saves that e-mail for later decryption and analysis. What bothers the Internet Service Providers is they have no
control over the Carnivore box, and no way of protecting the privacy of all the customers who aren't drug lords or escaped felons. What bothers the
American Civil Liberties Union is the likelihood that individuals will not only lose their right to privacy, but lose it in a new and insidious way.

Yeah it's suppose to be one mega packet sniffer that takes key words or finds keywords. So someone sends an IM that he got loaded and his friend
was bombed last night when they took shots of bush, it might be caught. It's basically the job of the NSA and their supercomputers, but I don't
think it's THE carnivore cause it's got too much bad press. There are subs that are made to tap fiber lines, they made phone companies let them
install taps in new CO's, ect ect. This kid was just a huge moron, there are a few things that need to be done to evade tracking.

Originally posted by ANMAN
Yeah it's suppose to be one mega packet sniffer that takes key words or finds keywords.

It's impossible for a "mega packet sniffer" to notice key words in all Internet traffic. The carnivore system watches all traffic on specific
ports/IP's on the systems for which it is installed... and that alone requires significant power.
We did an analysis some time back of how much horsepower and storage space would be needed just to sniff-out the header data of all e-mail sent every
day. It turned out that the amount of hardware, horsepower, and storage space amounted to an unachieveable figure.
One thread is here: www.abovetopsecret.com...

you think they only use this on people who commit regular crimes??? you dont see the possibility for
abuse of this kind of software..I do... and I dont like it at all..

Well... that's different than the topic of this thread now isn't it? When you asked simply "is there any way to stop this" I wasn't sure what you
referred to by this.
I think there is quite enough Internet traffic to make any effort at non-authorized use of this a futile venture.

you think they only use this on people who commit regular crimes??? you dont see the possibility for
abuse of this kind of software..I do... and I dont like it at all..

Well... that's different than the topic of this thread now isn't it?

.

I do not think what I asked is off topic here...and I do not mean use by unauthorized peoples..I mean the ability of government agencies to gain full
access and the ability to able to trace web postings ect...When the name of the topic is "first published use of carnivore"..I would like to know if
there is anyway to make it their last use of it[although i know it wont happen,but i would like to protect myself]..there are ways to stop wire
taps..i would like to know if there are ways to stop this.

Well... once the "carnivore" hardware/software is installed at your ISP... the only alternative is to stop using that ISP. But you can be certain
enough they're not tracking random web postings and e-mails... massive volume of such an effort prevents the concept from happening.

Yes it's true that an organization can't suck all internet traffic, but they can limit to possible hot packets by filtering it, so they can pick up
things that seem seedy, and they can pick up traffic from seedy places. The kind of power needed is insane; it may be the reason why the NSA has its
own computer chip factory on their premises. They also have one of the largest concentration of mathematicians in the world devising complex
algorithms to break into encryptions and search the raw data better.

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